


Captive

by ArdeaWrites



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alyx versus the whole wide world, Civil Protection, Combine - Freeform, Gen, half life - Freeform, half life 2 - Freeform, rebel soldiers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28178121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArdeaWrites/pseuds/ArdeaWrites
Summary: Alyx grew up dancing on the edge of freedom but she didn't always keep both feet on the right side. Five times the world caught up to her, and one time she chose to cross the line herself.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Captive

**Author's Note:**

> I'll add a proper description later, just an idea about how Alyx got herself captured in HL2 because I very much dislike how it was scripted in game.

The first time Alyx was captured, she didn't know it. The train car door closed behind them, shutting them and eight other refugees in the narrow space. She turned and looked up, and found the pale blue and silver of a CP helmet staring back at her. _"Attention citizens, your compliance is mandatory."_ Two CPs shuffled through the ten civilians, scanning faces. Her father's hand gripped hers so tightly she squirmed in protest. The two CPs zeroed in on him. _"Step aside citizen, your compliance is mandatory. Come with us."_ The train car opened. They stepped off, found four more armed CPs waiting for them. She felt something touch her back and didn't know it was the barrel of a gun. 

Her father picked her up and held her close. "We're complying, we're complying. Calm down. Tell me what you want." 

_"Come with us."_

Five steps, and her father dropped to the ground and rolled, his body covering hers. Six muted blats and the sharp snap of a Vortigaunt discharge, and she smelled gunsmoke and char. 

Six dead CPs, five living rebels and two Vortigaunts surrounded them. No one spoke. They gave Eli a hand to rise, still holding her, and then they ran. 

  


The second time Alyx was captured, she was alone and she saw them coming too late. The handgun was cold and heavy and she held it steady, but she had only one gun, and they had four trained on her. _"Drop your weapon."_

Ice in her stomach, ice in her throat, and the sudden knowledge they were willing and able to kill her; that she was a child among enemies, her youthful invincibility forever shattered. 

_"Drop your weapon, citizen. Your compliance is mandatory."_

She turned the gun up and raised her other hand. "I'm complying. Don't shoot." Slowly lowered it to the ground. They shoved her away from it, shoved her towards the waiting armored van. She saw the road ahead, _van, tower, prison, stalker,_ but to get there they had to pass a trash-clogged gap in the buildings, too narrow to be considered worth blocking off, wide enough for a small, determined child. One step to the side and she was in, ten steps and she tripped and pressed herself to the dirty gravel as bullets chipped the cement overhead. Bulky CP armored coats couldn't fit. She crawled on her belly through metal and broken glass until they gave up searching. _"Headcrabs will get her, she's dead anyway."_

The gun was lost and she was very sorry for running off and losing it, she cried to her father as he bandaged the cuts on her arms and knees, but he knew the missing weapon wasn't what made her shake. She'd seen the armored van open, glimpsed the other prisoners and seen her fate in their terror. 

  


The third time Alyx was captured, they thought she was alone. 

_"Drop your weapon, citizen. Your compliance is mandatory."_

She answered them. "Please don't do this." 

_"Your compliance is mandatory. Do not threaten us."_

"I'm not the threat but you don't want to take another step, trust me." 

_"Your compliance is mandatory. We will fire. Drop your weapon."_

The iron animatronic crushed the black armor and organic components in a horrifying display of strength. It brought her the last one, alive, so she might finish it herself. It was proud of its prize and of its success in protecting its creator. She walked away from the battlefield and felt no fear for the first time in years. Now she had an ally between her and the darkness, a living weapon and a guardian stronger than the Combine soldiers and the nightmares. 

  


The fourth time Alyx was captured, it wasn't by the Combine. 

"That's Vance's kid!" 

"Stop her!" 

She'd never paid other rebels much attention when she was out on her scouting runs. Equipment and raw materials were plentiful along the margins of civilization, if you knew where to look, and the most another rebel might do was stop and chat, tell her what resources they needed themselves and ask that she not strip anything essential to their efforts, She'd never had them block her access before. 

Now their hands were on her arms, dragging her back from the half-collapsed ruin of an industrial building. 

"You can't go in there." 

"Why?" 

"Just don't, ok? Go find somewhere else to hunt." 

But that was six floors of abandoned factory, lush with unpicked electronics and battery components. She wasn't backing off. "What's going on here?" 

D0G wouldn't fight the rebels. He was watching from somewhere nearby but to him this was just a wrestling match, a little roughhousing among friends. Common between her and the few rebels near her age. 

They held her down and she twisted away from them, kicked and fought with a strange cold terror in her belly, and ran to the ruin. Stupidly bold-anything might be waiting inside-but that wasn't fear on the rebel faces, that was guilt. Whatever was inside it wasn't deadly, it was shameful. 

It was very shameful. 

They weren't Overwatch. They were still human, but she had to look close to realize that. CPs, captured alive, stripped and tortured. All the pent-up rage of the surviving rebels unleashed on bodies just like their own, turning them into a parody of humanity as bad as a stalker. _They were still human!_ Between her and D0G they'd killed so many in their own defense but never like this, never slow and full of hatred. 

"You don't say a word about this, girl. You got that? Or do we have to drag you along with us?" 

She snarled in answer and raised her gun. Six rebels raised theirs on reflex. 

Firearms were a language D0G understood. He landed heavy behind her and growled a warning. She backed up into the shelter of his forelegs and lowered her gun. "Get out of here," she told them. "Run." 

  


The fifth time Alyx was captured, she never saw them until the gun was on her neck. 

One stepped from the dark closet, blue glowing eyes luminescent in the shadow and breath ragged through the mask. The barrel of the pulse rifle was ice cold on her bare skin. Her gun was holstered, she never touched it. Hadn’t been anywhere near it. 

The CP was silent, just holding position. What was it doing? Calling for backup? Waiting for orders? Combine out of sync, something was wrong. This was all wrong. CPs weren’t supposed to be here. She was well outside their sweep radius. This was dead land, between quarantine zone and civilian housing, four blocks past the walls. 

Where was D0G? _Come on, where are you?_ She hadn’t kept him close because she hadn’t anticipated Combine forces. Foolish of her. A deadly assumption. 

The CP breathed in and out and didn’t move. She heard crashing in the hall, gunfire from the rooms next door, screaming. A raid on the rebels she’d been sent to contact. Their base was compromised. 

Bullets punched through the walls but the CP had her in line with the brick chimney. Sheltered from the firefight. 

_Why? Who are you, what’s going on here?_ She should have been dead, should have been in the room when the raid happened. Not here, sweat pooling on her brow as her breath puffed cold in the winter air, trying not to look at the glowing blue eyes. 

_“Clear!”_

_“Clear!”_

CP calls from the far rooms. They’d finished the sweep, killed all rebels. 

_“Clear!”_ Loud from her CP, so loud she flinched. 

Clear. 

The gun withdrew from her neck. The CP backed away from her to the apartment door and blocked it with the wide uniform. The rest of the squad marched past, Combine-standard formation, comm channels humming with report of success. 

The CP merged in with the squad, becoming one of them again, just another anonymous enemy. 

_Who are you?_

D0G crashed through the apartment ceiling twenty seconds later, humming worry and inquiry. She stroked his head and waited for her heart to slow and wondered which lost friend now lived behind that mask. 

  


The last time Alyx was captured, she saw them all. 

Spread out like a swarm across rooftops and alleyways, stationed along walls, strung out through the sky. Hundreds, thousands, black flocks of manhacks and screaming scanners, CPs and Overwatch marching out from their garrisons. An army sent to stop them. 

She grabbed D0G’s head fins and turned his face to hers. “Go help Freeman. Do NOT follow me, do you understand? Go to Freeman now.” 

He whined in protest and shook his head. 

“I know, boy. But I have to. It’s the only way. Go to Freeman. If you follow me we’ll both die. Do you understand?” 

She wrung the nod of reluctant acceptance from him. 

“I’m sorry. Please, keep him safe. I’ll see you again I promise.” 

He bounded down into the streets, working his way through the enemy to Freeman’s last position. 

She went to the roof edge and yelled, loud as she could. “This way!” Yelled again and again. 

The swarm turned, spotted her. Guns raised, but the scanners got there first. She held her fire and let them take a real close look. _Yeah, you bastards. It’s me. Come get me!_

And then she ran. 

They wouldn’t shoot her. The scanners would relay her identity and Breen would confirm it, and the orders would come down from on high. Alyx was to be captured alive and unharmed. She was worth nothing to them dead, but whole planets if kept alive. Leverage against her father, against the Vortigaunts, against Freeman, against the whole rebel force in cities across the world. 

She’d never asked for such an honor from humanity’s enemy. 

Hundreds of heads turned in her direction. Manhacks folded their blades and plummeted towards her, herding her into their walls and traps. She slid through, under and over. Climbed ladders and dropped into hidden passages. They were on her heels now, no more baiting needed. 

One last run, one last great chase across the city. However it ended, it would end. She couldn’t outrun and outfight them in the open and she couldn’t escape them or they’d remember their bigger enemy. 

_Freeman, you had better be doing your job right now._ Breath was a knife in her chest, her legs ached with effort, her palms bruised from landing and pulling, her arms sore from pulling her weight up. Round and round she led them until they fenced her in, until her turns were dictated by their presence and not her planning, until she came up suddenly against a solid wall of Combine carbon too sleek and high for her to climb, welded down and out. Trapped. 

They didn’t shoot, but they did use their stun sticks. They knew what she was capable of even after she dropped the gun. They kept her bound, weapons on her, moved her without grace, and they watched the rooftops for D0G. _He’s not here you fools. You’ll never catch him. You’ll never catch Freeman either. We’ve won._ Generators exploding across the city, barriers falling, black smoke pouring up from the empty Combine garrisons. 

She dropped, made them carry her the final steps to the black armored van. Let herself be strapped into the Strider sling and bit down hard on her fear. _However it ends, it ends today. I’m coming, dad. Just wait. We’re all coming._


End file.
